Date Movie

Movie Review

Date Movie plays as if the worst two of the six writers of Scary Movie scribbled it down on the back of a cocktail napkin while on the way from their hotel to the set. It sets out to apply Scary Movie's horror parody formula to rom-coms, and in doing so comes up with something, believe it or not, worse.

Date Movie plays as if the worst two of the six writers of Scary Movie scribbled it down on the back of a cocktail napkin while on the way from their hotel to the set. It sets out to apply Scary Movie's horror parody formula to rom-coms, and in doing so comes up with something, believe it or not, worse.

It's worse because while Scary Movie took serious films and tried to make them funny, Date Movie takes already funny movies and makes them completely unfunny. I'm sure that's not what they were going for; the idea is of course to make them even funnier. But there's no hope of doing that, when you're working with the two worst of the six writers of Scary Movie. Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer aren't up to outdoing Jay Roach, let alone Rob Reiner.

Because this is another one of those horrible parody movies, there's not really a story. Instead there's a loose assortment of skits, which were presumably created based on a list of the highest grossing romantic comedies in the past decade or two. Those skits are then randomly stitched together with a hackneyed rom-com plot powered by Alyson Hannigan alternating between fat suit and teeny black dress.

Alyson plays Julia Jones, a lovesick girl who spends the movie chasing after a British twit. Together they stumble through a laundry list of rip offs of movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, My Best Friend's Wedding, The Wedding Planner, and anything you can think of that once starred Ben Stiller. When it's not directly stealing from something, Date Movie settles for being completely random. For instance, what better way to follow up a tender moment than with an inexplicable bum fight? Actually that almost sounds funny on paper. Frieberg and Seltzer go out of their way to make sure it isn’t.

There are people who will no doubt find Date Movie uproariously funny. Luckily for the continued health of our culture and country those people are few and let's face it, they're the types who will laugh at just about anything. This is the absolute bottom rung of spoof-humor, and those of you with an average to above average IQ will find it a nearly impossible task to squeeze out even the tiniest of chuckles.

Sure, it's going to make a lot of money. After all, there weren't many advance reviews. Fox was careful not to screen this one for the press. Even if it had been critically bashed, let's face it, people show up for this kind of crap almost by reflex. But if there's any sense left at all in the American movie going public, after whatever cash it manages to make by trickery, Date Movie won't make much more off of repeat business.